"I Heard You Paint Houses": Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa (17 page)

His popularity with his own membership reflected their willingness to reap the tangible rewards he obtained for them in wages, vacations, pensions, and health and welfare benefits. As Hoffa told Johnny Dio in one of those wiretapped conversations that he couldn’t remember: “…treat them right and you don’t have to worry.”

Although others may have shared his zeal to improve the lives of American working men and women and their families, Jimmy Hoffa had the power to do something about it. His ardent supporter Frank Sheeran said that “Jimmy Hoffa was ahead of his time when it came to labor. There were only two things that mattered in his life: the union and his family. Believe it or not, as strong as he was for the union, his wife and his daughter and his son came first to him. Unions to him were a thing that helped not just the men, but it helped the men’s families, too. They talk all about family values these days. Jimmy was ahead of his time on that, too. Those two things were his whole life.”

Jimmy Hoffa once said to Frank Sheeran enthusiastically, “If you got it, Irish, a truck driver brought it to you. Don’t ever forget that. That’s the whole secret to what we do.” That “you got it” part covered food, clothing, medicine, building materials, fuel for home and industry, just about everything. Because a nationwide trucking strike could literally starve and shut down the nation, Bobby Kennedy called Jimmy Hoffa’s Teamsters “the most powerful institution in the country aside from the United States government…. and as Mr. Hoffa operates it, this is a conspiracy of evil.” Senator John L. McClellan took the image a step further. McClellan called “the Teamsters under Mr. Hoffa’s leadership” a “superpower in this country—a power greater than the people and greater than the government.”

From the time in 1957 that his predecessor and mentor Dave Beck abdicated the presidency and went to jail for embezzling $370,000 from the Western Conference of Teamsters, to finance, among other things, the building of a house for his son, the new president Jimmy Hoffa wielded his power absolutely. Perhaps it is true that all power corrupts, and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. If it is so, Jimmy Hoffa was not apologetic about the criminal records of the men with whom he allied himself to accomplish his goals.

Hoffa once announced to a television audience: “Now, when you talk about the question of hoodlums and gangsters, the first people that hire hoodlums and gangsters are employers. If there are any illegal forces in the community, he’ll use them, strong-arm and otherwise. And so if you’re going to stay in the business of organizing the unorganized, maintaining the union you have, then you better have a resistance.”

Hoffa’s “resistance” consisted of close alliances with the most powerful godfathers of the newly uncovered, secret tangled web of Apalachin gangsters who had carved America into twenty-four territories of organized crime and who ran their organizations (called families) with a military structure. They were “bosses,” the godfathers who were the equivalent of generals; “underbosses” and “consiglieres,” who were the equivalent of top brass; “capos,” who were the equivalent of captains; and “soldiers,” who, as soldiers, followed the orders from upstairs. In addition, there were associates like Frank Sheeran who had whatever status they earned, but who were not permitted an official rank in the Italian families’ military structure.

From the historical record there can be little doubt that Hoffa knew full well that the vast majority of mobsters who constituted his “resistance” had little regard for his ideals. Johnny Dio himself owned and operated a nonunion garment industry dress shop. Many of these dark figures looked upon unions as just another means to aid them in the commission of more crime, and to aid them in the accumulation of more wealth and greater power.

Meanwhile, in speech after speech to his rank and file, Hoffa told his brother Teamsters, “All this hocus-pocus about racketeers and crooks is a smokescreen to carry you back to the days when they could drop you in the scrap heap like they do a worn-out truck.”

On the other hand, in his book,
The Enemy Within,
Bobby Kennedy wrote about his experiences and observations as chief counsel for the McClellan Committee hearings on organized crime and labor unions, saying: “We saw and questioned some of the nation’s most notorious gangsters and racketeers. But there was no group that better fits the prototype of the old Al Capone syndicate than Jimmy Hoffa and some of his chief lieutenants in and out of the union.”

Twentieth Century Fox commissioned a screenplay of Bobby Kennedy’s book. Budd Schulberg, the celebrated writer of
On the Waterfront,
wrote the screenplay, but the project was abandoned by the studio. Columbia Pictures then expressed interest in picking up the project but abandoned it as well. In an introduction he wrote to a 1972 book written about Hoffa by Bobby Kennedy’s chief aide, Walter Sheridan, Budd Schulberg explained why the two studios abandoned the project: “A labor tough walked right into the office of the new head of [Twentieth Century Fox] to warn him that if the picture was ever made [Teamster] drivers would refuse to deliver the prints to the theaters. And if they got there by any other means, stink bombs would drive out the audiences.”

This threat to Twentieth Century Fox was backed by a warning letter to Columbia Pictures from Teamsters lawyer Bill Bufalino, who at the time was also Hoffa’s lawyer. Budd Schulberg wrote about Bufalino’s letter: “It stated flatly that Twentieth Century Fox had wisely abandoned the project as soon as all the possible eventualities had been pointed out to them, and he felt confident that Columbia would be smart enough to do likewise.”

 
chapter twelve
 

“I Heard You Paint Houses”

“
My restless streak never went away. And it seems like my whole life when I could still get around pretty good on my legs I had a lot of gypsy in me.

Working out of the union hall on a day-by-day basis with no commitment gave me the freedom to be wherever I needed to be on any given day. On the days I had a downtown odd job, I just didn’t bother going down to the union hall to get a truck. Little by little as my reputation increased I did more and more odd jobs downtown. I supported myself, and I dropped by and paid support to Mary and the girls depending on how much I had that week. Everything I did downtown was a cash business; even the dance halls paid me in cash.

If I had a truck for the day, however, there was no cash attached to it. You couldn’t do any larceny on the side with a truck you only had for a day. You needed more than a day here and there to establish a system, like the hindquarter thing with Food Fair. So going downtown and hanging around the bar was like shaping up for extra cash.

I learned the ropes from Skinny Razor and a lot of his people. It was like they were the combat veterans in this line of work and I was the new recruit just coming in to the outfit. In people’s eyes I appeared to be closer to Angelo and his people than I was to Russell. But my allegiance was to Russell. I just saw more of Angelo and his people, because he was downtown and Russell was mostly upstate. Angelo said he loaned me to Russell, but it was really the other way around. Russell loaned me to Angelo. Russell thought it would be good for me to learn and earn downtown with Angelo’s people. One day Russell called me his Irishman, and then everybody else downtown started calling me Irish or the Irishman instead of Cheech.

After the Whispers matter I started having a piece available to me for whatever purpose at all times. If I was driving I had one in the car’s glove compartment. One night, coming home around two in the morning from the Nixon Ballroom, I stopped at a red light on a dark corner on Spring Garden Street where the streetlight was busted. I was alone and my window was down. This young black guy came up waving a gun under my nose. I figured he’s the one who must have put the streetlight out on that corner by breaking the lightbulb. It was his corner. He had a partner standing behind him for backup without an obvious piece on him. The one with the gun told me he wanted my wallet. I told him, “Sure, but it’s in my glove compartment.” I told him to “settle down” and “don’t do anything rash, young fellow.” I reached across into the glove compartment and took hold of my snub-nosed .38, which the bandit couldn’t see at all because my broad shoulders were blocking his view. And then when I turned back to him he couldn’t see it because of my big hand and because I swept around as fast as the tail on a kangaroo. He had his empty hand out for what he thought was going to be my wallet. I shot him in the kneecap, and when he started to double down I shot him in his other kneecap. In my rearview mirror while I pulled away I could see him rolling around in the street, and I could see his buddy running straight down Spring Garden Street. Something told me his buddy wasn’t running for help or for more backup. Something told me the one rolling on the ground would never do anymore running of his own. From now on every time he took a step when he walked he’d feel it in what was left of his kneecaps and he’d think of me.

Just to be on the safe side I got rid of that .38. If you kept a piece around the car or the house it was best to have a brand-new piece, one that was never fired. That way it could never be linked to anything. You never would know with an old piece whether somebody else used it in something that you didn’t even do. So I recommend a brand-new piece out of the box.

I was getting a little stronger into pushing money, starting to get into bigger sums. People knew where to find me and they would come to me for it. I didn’t need a truck route anymore. Those days of pushing $10 loans to waitresses at the White Tower hamburger joints were over.

I had this one guy who I made a loan to who I thought was avoiding me. I couldn’t find him anywhere. No vig, no nothing. One night one of the guys came into the Friendly and told me they had seen this guy I was looking for over at Harry “The Hunchback” Riccobene’s bar called the Yesteryear Lounge. When I caught up with him playing cards in Harry’s bar, the guy told me his mother died and the funeral set him back the money he was saving to give me. I felt bad for the guy, and I went to the Friendly and told Skinny Razor I found the guy at Harry’s. Skinny said, “Did you get any of your money?” I said, “Not yet,” and Skinny said, “Don’t tell me. Let me guess. His mother died.” So I said, “Yeah, poor guy. I guess you heard.” Skinny Razor said, “His fucking mother’s been dying over and over again for ten years.”

I felt more than a little bit taken advantage of because I was new. Imagine a guy using his mother’s name like that. So I went back down to Harry’s and told the deadbeat to get up from the card table. He was my height but he outweighed me a little bit. He got up ready and threw a punch at me, and I beat him to the punch. I decked him, and down went the card table, chairs flying. He came up with a chair in his hand, and I snatched it away from him and threw it at him and proceeded to beat him to a bloody pulp and left him unconscious on the floor.

All of a sudden Harry came in, looked around, and went nuts. He had a hunchback, but he was still tough and he was still a made man and very high up with Angelo. He started yelling at me for trashing his bar, getting the guy’s blood on the barroom floor. I told him I’d pay for the damage. He said it didn’t matter, what kind of respect was I showing trashing his bar? I could have taken the guy outside into the street to fight him. Not right in the bar. I didn’t know Harry too good, but I told him the guy swung at me. I told him the guy owed me money and he wouldn’t even come up with the juice. Harry said, “This bum had the balls to go out on the street and borrow more money? He owes everybody already.” I said, “I didn’t know that when I loaned him the money.” Then Harry “The Hunchback” walked over to the guy on the floor and pulled him up by his hair and began beating his face for him, too.